IGERT: Integrated Graduate Education and Research in Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity

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This IGERT project is an integrated program of education and research in the area of Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity. Conceptual, technical, and computational developments are driving a major convergence among the biological, earth, and physical sciences. Over the next several decades, this disciplinary convergence will transform understanding of basic processes that control the stability and sustainability of natural environments. These insights will have extraordinary implications for the ability to predict and manage the effects of modern human activities on the structure and function of ecosystems across local, regional, and global scales. Such new knowledge is critical in planning for a safe, sustainable, and prosperous future. The IGERT project goals are to create an environment where researchers from ecology and evolutionary biology, biogeochemistry, environmental engineering, hydrology, environmental microbiology, and materials science come together to create novel interdisciplinary approaches to major questions in environmental science, and to train the next generation of leaders in this new interdisciplinary science. Emphasis will be on intellectual diversity and non-traditional pedagogies in training students across disciplinary boundaries, while deliberately enhancing connections with international and non-university partners. Workshop and seminar style learning will be employed, as well as active involvement of students in the management and implementation of the program. The intellectual foci will be the interaction of biological and physico-chemical controls on the cycling of metals and nutrients, especially terrestrial nitrogen; the role of microbiological processes in mediating biogeochemical cycling; and the effects of variation in genotype and phenotype on ecosystem functioning. Ultimately, the program will consider how complex behavior arises from the interaction of individually simple relationships in natural and managed ecosystems. Cornell University has outstanding resources in individual disciplines, and the IGERT program offers a unique opportunity to bring together many of these individual efforts into an integrated whole.IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the fifth year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.